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"Some birds aren't meant to be caged, their feathers are just too bright"- Morgan Freeman, Shawshank Redemption. This blog is from one such bird who couldn't be caged by organizations who mandate scripted software testing. Pradeep Soundararajan welcomes you to this blog and wishes you a good time here and even otherwise.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

TASTRO - Tester's Astrology by Rrajesh Barde

One of Moolya'scustomer, a large IT company in India wanted me help a group of testers think beyond the boundaries they had accustomed to. They wanted me to help them bring out the potential and creativity of testers within their organization. Having thousands of testers, they did know where to start from - the top 30 they had. Top 30 in terms of demonstrated passion for software testing.

The icing on the cake, they wanted their testers to progress towards becoming brainual testers.

A group of 30 testers were introduced to me and I spent time for a couple of weeks with them on various activities. We ended up doing so many good things together that we accomplished the mission together. There were plenty of great work that they did. Now, those 30 have been successful in inspiring 30 more and this chain reaction is appearing to happen. If it goes on, I am sure this organization is going to rock in the coming years.

Somebody impressed with how I mentored these 30 asked me, "Aren't you giving away all secrets of how testers in Moolya test?", to which I replied, "There is no secret. This is how we test and this is how we live". There is nothing to hide. We don't have any secret ingredient or a secret ingredient soup unlike many services companies. We have watched KungFu Panda and hope you too have watched it. We focus on our skills. Our website tells that story.

In this post, I want to highlight the creativity that came out of the exercises of Brainual Testing.
Rrajesh Barde surprised me that he had been reading my blogs ever since I started it and he told me he had also commented on it. I was glad to meet my oldest (well, he's pretty young) blog reader. The only question I asked him was, "Was it worth your time?"

This guy turned out to be hyper creative. He had a sense of humor, lateral thinking, passion to test, leadership and creativity. We were brainstorming of how do we educate testers without letting them know they are educated. Of course, books are boring to most. What content do we feed them with? We discussed on Andy Glover's Cartoons for it. However, that didn't solve the problem of testers within their organization being able to see Andy working with them.

So, Rrajesh Barde in the meeting interrupted, "If I may, I have an idea..." and then came out with this brilliant idea of TASTRO - Testers ASTROlogy. In a country like India, a lot of people refer to Astrology. They at least want to read if there is something good in it for them. I thought that was a brilliant idea and we had to develop it further. We needed to mix fun and pun into it. We needed the learning touch. We needed people to look forward to their weekly TASTRO.

Here is what we got:

TASTRO – Tester’s Astro – What do your test
signs foretell?

Aries

Your stars look good for coming week however
you might face an environment downtime. Why not make a quick checklist on how to set it up?

Taurus

Avoid calls during Rahu Kaal. Those
who have calls with your on-site coordinators during this time, Beware!!

Gemini

The planetary movements suggest that
the build scheduled on week day will be delivered to the Testing team on
Friday after sunset. You have plenty of time to read Rapid Software Testing Appendix and practice new testing ideas.

Cancer

Though you think you know it, you
have no certainty until you try. You might see a surprise appreciation for
your smart work. Smart work could mean, you use oracles to test.

Leo

You are worried with unplanned work
load. Read the book – Lessons Learned in Software Testing at home and you may
see the change in office.

Virgo

Worried why you your productivity appears to have come down? How long has it been since you took a break? Quick breaks between test sessions are important.

Libra

In the busy times, be prepared to
work late, eat pizza for dinner at work, and work for some weekends. Don't wanna do that? Go beyond test cases, you will find more bugs.

Scorpio

There is a chance that your
relationship with developers would go sour in the coming week. So treat them
with chocolates. Developers are rich source of information for a tester.

Sagittarius

Your customers would be under the
influence of aggressive Mars. You would be forced to test whatever is thrown
at you. Check for the mission to be achieved to avoid falling into traps

Capricorn

You would be trying to achieve the
stars by clicking here and there with your monkey paws. Stop doing that and
your career could get better.

Aquarius

Your managers would somehow have a
strong notion that you have just been marking those test cases as “pass”
without executing them. Honesty is important for a good tester.

Pisces

When you have crashed the software and waiting for the system to boot, prepare your own test idea cheat sheet. For those
who do, future has been bright.

Isn't this awesome? I feel testers like Rrajesh Barde are a huge boon to our industry. The beauty of my consulting was, I felt there wasn't just one Rrajesh Barde I met but many. I may cover about others in future posts.

A couple of years ago, I used to go to a consulting assignment as though I am superior and I consult people because they were inferior. These days, I go to consulting to get humbled by people like the ones I met.

Please, everybody, stretch out your creativity, you would find an Andy Glover or Rrajesh Barde in you. For those who want to follow Rrajesh's blog, here is the link. He came out with another concept called Bug Burji (Burji is a dish made out of Egg and we call it Egg Burji, Rrajesh made a Bug Burji out of it). Rrajesh, you inspire me. I hope after reading your work, a couple of others may join me in admiring your work and contribution.

I am telling myself that I was born to witness this beginning of the golden era of software testing. Don't know if you can even see what I am experiencing.

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Tester Tested! by Pradeep Soundararajan is licensed under Creative Commons. You must owe credits to Pradeep Soundararajan when you copy paste anything from here by mentioning the name and proper linking to the post. You are not allowed to edit any of the post without permission. For permissions, write to pradeep.srajan@gmail.com